SAN FRANCISCO — January 18, 2018 — Citi Ventures today announced the launch of Citi® University Partnerships in Innovation & Discovery (CUPID), a new program that engages and embeds students from leading universities in innovation efforts across Citi. Currently, more than 80 students from 12 U.S. universities are receiving course credit for their work in semester-long projects focused on emerging technologies such as machine learning, natural language processing, and big data analytics. CUPID leverages talent from beyond business graduate programs to include individuals studying design, engineering and public policy.

“We are diligently working to create a fabric of innovation across Citi and an important part of that is interacting with a wide array of diverse and emerging talent,” said Vanessa Colella, Head of Citi Ventures and Citi’s Chief Innovation Officer. “While our employees continue to test and validate new solutions that help our clients, we want to also create a platform in partnership with leading academic institutions where new ideas can percolate. The energy and creativity of the students is palpable, and it’s been incredible to work alongside them.”

The students are matched based on their interest and skill set with internal Citi initiatives including projects within Citi’s D10Xsm program, an internal strategic growth model managed by Citi Ventures that enables employees to take new business ideas from concept to launch. Grounded in the disciplines of venture capital and Lean Startup methodology, D10X provides employees with the opportunity to discover and validate new ideas that are at least ten times better for clients and could potentially solve critical pain points. We currently have more than 200 employee founders actively working on nearly 100 internal D10X startup ideas, and over 1,500 employees have been involved in D10X since it was introduced two years ago by Citi Ventures.

“NYU Stern students are really responding to the opportunity to work on these types of real-world innovation projects, and doing so at a global bank will not only help them hone their skills in strategy and technical product development, but also expand their awareness of future career opportunities at Citi and beyond,” said Jamie Tobias, Assistant Dean, NYU Stern, who oversees the School’s Stern Solutions experiential learning projects.

Participating universities include Cornell Tech, Columbia University Business School, Georgetown University, NYU Stern School of Business, NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, Parsons School of Design at The New School University, The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas at Austin and others. Citi recently expanded its collaboration with Cornell Tech, as the only financial institution at the Tata Innovation Center at Cornell Tech. The new Cornell Tech campus opened in September on Roosevelt Island in New York.

CUPID builds on existing efforts including hackathons and design sprints to create, test and prototype new ideas that have the potential to generate the best solutions for clients. Since the start of this work in early 2017, more than 200 university students from 16 different universities in the U.S, U.K and Canada have participated in some element of innovation work through CUPID. The program will continue and expand into 2018 through new partnerships with additional universities.